“Cry wolf” story rakes in ratings

That chupacabra story may have gotten viewers wondering just what kind of ridiculous animal the local news really is, but it helped KENS-TV’s 10 p.m. news rake in mammoth ratings the first night of November sweeps.

The suspense-filled report from reporter Joe Conger about the Cuero woman’s find of a mysterious animal’s dead body — that brought national attention to the Texas town and spawned a lucrative T-shirt business for the woman — was a large factor in the station finishing first in a big way Thursday night.

In fact, according to KENS General Manager Bob McGann, his “Eyewitness News” audience rating and share was twice that of WOAI’s late news. “The rating was huge in this day and age,” he said.

He said the story also registered a dynamite total of 11,000 hits by noon today on MySanAntonio.com, the shared Web site by the San Antonio Express-News and KENS. “There was a lot of interest in the chupacabra,” McGann said.

Quality-wise, however, the story was highly questionable in the minds of several e-mailers and callers to this column. One viewer wrote: “I can’t tell if I’m watching a newscast during a ratings period or a parody of a newscast during a ratings period.

“Admittedly it was fun and entertaining but I don’t generally watch the news for entertainment until the Newsreel. In a time when news media often faces criticism (just and unjust), do they ever worry that people will stop taking them seriously as providers of news?

“If a news organization can promote and sensationalize a story about a dead coyote to that extent, how do I know the next government scandal or consumer product recall is something I should really take seriously and not just a dead coyote being whipped up into another chupacabra event?”

The e-mailer particularly took issue with the live portion of the story, which had Conger holding a sealed envelope from the site of the DNA lab tests of the creature — at Texas State University-San Marcos.

“I can’t believe they forgot the attractive young lady in heels to present the sealed envelope,” the viewer wrote, comparing the news story to results shows on reality television, or “the results of paternity testing on Jerry Springer?”

I certainly second his point. When Conger announced, after the ultra-long chupacabra buildup, that we’d get the answer after weather, I, too, rolled my eyes. Thanks goodness for co-anchor Sarah Lucero’s insistence that he give us the results “now” rather than force us to wait another five minutes.

Particularly when you saw that those results could rate in the Guinness Book of World Records as one of TV’s biggest letdowns. Science deemed the creature was a mere coyote.

In the words of local comedy writer David Belous: “The hyped build-up hardly touched reality! So next time, Channel 5, when you cry ‘wolf,’ maybe no one will be here to watch!”